I Let a Real Cinematographer Roast My 3D Art 

Do you also experience stress from the creative life we live? Consider BetterHelp here; www.BetterHelp.com/kaizen. Don't bottle up frustrations and issues that come with learning and growing as a human, but share your problems through therapy. Stay healthy friends 🧡

Nothing like a well roasted render 🔥 Glad I could help

if you dont want to calculate all the camera settings and have complicated set ups for a specific look there is a great add on that lets you control the blender camera like a real camera. Its easy to use and the results are very "cinematic". Its called Photographer 5 and i use it every project

as a cinematographer, its great to see 3D artists taking more time to learn the craft to amplify their work!

The film grain I handle the same like Polyfjord explains, the important thing to make it look realistic is having more noise in the dark areas than in the bright areas, not only for analog film grain, but also when recreating digital camera noise, because underexposed parts of digital images also usually have more noise due to the worse signal to noise ratio. For vignetting on the other hand I use an Ellipse mask set to a circle size instead of Box, because originally the vignetting comes from the circular image of a lens not fully exposing the rectangular film strip.

To get a bit of perspective of how important good cinematography actually is (especially in animation), look up freecam cutscenes from games. Everything looks really weird and doesn't make any sense from a different point of view. Devs are intentionally breaking rigs, quickly moving stuff around, layering effects, hiding transitions etc. just to get the perfect shot.

Focal length is one. Film/sensor size is two. It will impact the perceived angle and the aperture result will also be different.

If anybody wants to create a cinematic shot, I recommend focusing on mimicking filmic lighting techniques before camera techniques. Good cinematographers paint their subjects with light and on a real set lighting is the part that takes the longest to perfect. Using lighting to shape shadows and create depth will make your shots look so much better in your final renders!

The ocean modifier has a tile built in so you don't need to do it manually 🎉

Cinematographer here. In my opinion something can be described as cinematic 90% thanks to great compositions and a right use of black and white values. Usually there is the main subject in the shot, if it is bright, the background is dark and it’s well placed - I’m sure this shot could be described as cinematic. You can do this separation with colours, but trust me, values work much better. ‘Fix this in post’ is a joke because you can’t fix bad composition or badly separated BW image. Watch ‘best movie shots’ or something like this on RU-vid and ask yourself ‘why this shot is great’ Wish you cinematographic renders!

Two of my favorite Blender RU-vidrs? Together at last!! ❤❤ Great video

thanks for the film grain plug. 🔥

Great video, I did something on this topic a few years back, using some of your techniques but your quality is waaaay higher. Thanks for sharing!

adding a slight camera shake can be more realistic as real world cameras dont stay perfectly flat on the ground also nice video i learnt a few things about cinematography .

This is a crazy concept! Love it

I'd watch hours of these, keep going man. love you both 😘

Polyfjord's normal camera shoots are better than my renders that take me hrs😅(I usually give up due to the burn outs)

One thing I noticed, is when he turns his head to the left in the beginning, I feel like I too want to see what he is looking at but the camera doesn't pan. Maybe he should be looking to the left from the moment we see him and then he turns forward from the moment we see his head

Speaking the truth, I didn't plan to watch the video today, but you are talking so thrillingly, that I didn't notice watching the video from start to finish. Nice one!

Great video as always!

I love this video prompt sm great stuff

Well done kai, this is one of my headache, when I do my videos, a quick one, sometimes when you gonna do shots with diferents cameras inside the scene the time with each camara count as well, because if don't give the right balance could look like bored

Would be fun to see version 2 after implementing Polyfjord's advice. Interestingly the first 2 he said, low poly character and patterned ocean, were the two I had in mind (as a layperson, lol).

Great video and nice approach👍🏻 lot to learn from this! One thing that makes me wondering if the ‘technical expert’ is the (only) one to judge if a scene or shot is awesome? Setting restrictions based on if it can or cannot be done by real gear or skills isn’t always the way to go… but then again, knowing how things work in real life is great to get a ‘familiar experience’. So yes, great video… thanks 🙏🏻

i really hope this (relatively) new style of video is working for your channel because it's so much better than before.

Another day, another banger from ma boy kaizen

Well done Kaizen! Glad you passed the test! 🙂 Really interesting exercise, too! Great tips, and I like the result. I'm a huge fan of your channel, and your work is great, so please don't treat the following in any way as criticism, just tips for future reference. 🙂 I would advise against using the method shown for achieving the anamorphic look. I don't think your method actually achieves the desired results. I may be wrong, but I think once the picture becomes unsqueezed the bokeh shape actually remains the same (circular by default) as it would be without doing that, so you're just losing resolution in one direction. Instead, under camera settings, under aperture, setting "Ratio" either to 2 will give you the correct "squeeze factor" you're after. Of course there are other things that can make a shot look anamorphic, especially lens flares, but since your scene is intentionally low contrast and doesn't feature bright lights, flare would be essentially invisible anyway. By the way, 'Media Division' youtube channel has a fascinating, in-depth series on anamorphic lenses if anyone's interested. Once again, great video! Thank you for sharing this with us. It's not easy letting someone else judge your work! You did well!

Heeeeeey, a long overdue collaboration 🙂👏 And great tips!! Wrote everything down 📝

those were very useful cinematography tips.

It is amazing that for a CG desk job, you have ads for mental health support... This really shows how bad things are getting in this industry, how unvalued is personal and family sacrifice, and how little aspiring and some super skilled artists are willing to be paid in order to get a job modeling massive scenes. Yeah, sad times, people, sad times...

certainly food for thought brother..

2 of my favorite Blender creators😁

another interstellar stan i see. absolute great movie

great video i loved it💙

My input would be the camera is moving waaaaay too fast. There is a reason why 24 fps is considered cinematic.

I dont really get the anamorphic look. I understand that streching the aspect ratio and then correcting the squeeze later in post creates some of the iconic movie imperfections such as horizontal oval flares, veiling glare, horizontal blue lines etc. But what i dont understand is why you would pick this process over just not stretching the image and then when adding vfx, just stretching the vfx instead

I‘m not a cinematographer but once i have learned that choice of focal length depends on how do you want the audience to feel and be part of the scene. A wideangle for just be same involved as the shown actor and the more tele you use the more „personal“ distance you have to the scene. You just observe it. So in the original movie they have chosen a wideangle exactly for the feeling that the viewer is also in danger. It would have been nice to see a second, corrected version after all the good tipps of polifjord to reach the 10. 🙂

17:15 Alright I know I'm not the only person who thought someone was knocking on my door with that music

Fascinating video!

this video was great and refreshing but IMO most people already knows Polyfjord and his involvement with CG and Blender etc. I think next time you should get someone who isn't associated Blender or CG in anyways and knows nothing about CG and only familiar working with real cameras as a fulltime profession to get fresh sets of eyes and perspectives.

I love blender and 3D art. My background is photography (as a hobby, not professional), so focal lengths, apertures, grain, exposure, lighting, contrast, colors, all that is easy for me. I suck at modelling though...

If You want a digital Type of „grain“ just add a Lens distortion node and enable jitter and fit (don‘t enable projector) and put distort to 0 and dispersion to .01

Polyfjord + Kaizen. The collab we didn't know we need. But the one we deserve.

You should have stayed with the focal length at 02:48. The most important part of the scene.

Can somebody explain to me what this anamorphic lens workflow is suppose to archive? I don't get it. An anamorphic lens literally compresses the light by distorting the way photons travel. These lenses where invented to make more use of an already established film (negative) format. Premium quality on a smaller budget - the ability to project a movie in scope format without having to use an different (more expensive) film projector and more expensive film material. It always was a technical workaround for an technical issue that is no longer relevant due to modern digital cameras (and projectors). I fail to see how rendering stretched and squashing in post would create any meaningful differences in the end result.... Why do 1 * 2 /2 = 1 if you can just do 1 = 1? Is there something I am missing?

10:45 you can get that look just by going into your camera depth of field settings, and under aperture, change the ratio to 2.

I think the focus should change sooner. You wouldn't want the very edge of the footage to be in focus while everything else is blured.

Fastest way to do anamorphic in blender is to use Rotation and Ratio option in Camera Properties , Below the Aperture F-stop option , set the rotation to 90 and then the ratio to whatever Ratio you're looking for I usually use 2.35, you should see the effect immediately

I love Interstellar the most too. It is so beautiful.

Haha "Where lens" - great video nonetheless! thank you:)

Camera lenses utilized in filmmaking can extend up to 400mm, as seen in films like 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.' Studying cinematography demands a rigorous and extensive journey over the years to attain expertise and a deep understanding of the essence of cinematography. It involves mastering a multitude of technical skills, such as lighting, composition, and camera operation, while also delving into the intricacies of visual storytelling. Additionally, cinematographers must develop a keen artistic sensibility to effectively convey emotions, themes, and narratives through visual imagery. And for the final touch, anamorphic does not give you a cinema look, it gives you something else.

Amazing videoo!! Kaizen n polyjford best duo polyjford is amazing i like him from a whilee !

Polyfjord is the greatest to ever exist

9:11 enable "show limits" in the viewport display of the camera and then you can see the focal point of the camera

Can't wait to watch this. My camera work is absolute trash

This video should be a must watch for 3PS game developers (except Guerrilla Games, for example). They usually just put the character in the center and that's all for the cinematography. :)

I've quit Blender for a while now, but seeing these projects make me feel good

I love Interstellar as well! In did the same scene with Wave, Love it! I follow this guy (Polyfjord or Lotsalote) since his love to Rigid Bodies :) he is very good! Thanks for Sharing skills!

Duplicating the water instead of using the ocean sim options hurt my bones

Amazing work. We need something like Nanite they have in unreal, that would be blender's next greatest feature, although there's too much hype for generative AI. Blender chokes when the poly count hits like a million even for you people with powerful computers, almost infinite mesh polycount that will be gold.

Regarding Log,when he says "compression", that comes across a bit wrong. Not sure what he actually meant, but it's not really a hack for data compression, it's about value compression of anything, ie, applying a curve to bring all high values below 1. The reason it's a curve instead of just general brightness is to save as much image information as possible inside the visible range of the image format, ie avoiding clipping. Log file formats (dpx, cin, prores, others) are typically 8bit, 10bit or 16bit but not as floating point values, but instead integer (whole number) values, meaning their max value is 255 or, 1024, or 65535 respectively, and all gradients in the image will be stepping along this limited range of numbers. And if your value compression is linear (ie. just brightness) all values will be equally treated, but if you instead compress it under a curve (incidentally; a Log curve), then the values you care more about will have more integer steps available to them. When you bring those log values into your grading suite, that software will have more gradient values to play with where it counts for creative choices. And finally, the result of the grading session usually means exporting an 8bit final result which is meant to be displayed on your 8bit sRGB monitor or TV. The final output format can also be an HDR format if you have an HDR TV, in which case the final unpacking of the curve happens in that display device (that's the simplified explanation anyway)

You probably won't see this but for future reference the ocean modifier has a input for tiling so you can do that instead of duplicating it

The repeat on the ocean tiles is the giveaway that this is a digital scene for me.

as a cinematography teacher i can say with confidence that teachers are hardest on the people who they believe the most in. if someone ever has lots of feedback for you then this normally means they see lots of potential in you. really well done!

Hey Kaizen Great video !! But i think you forget to add the camera resolution Cheat sheet in the description Please add it .

I know the choice of words in the title is for the RU-vid algorithm but this is called critiquing. No artist can grow in a vacuum, we should all regularly seek advice, especially from professionals.

You are not doing your anamorphic correctly, you just stretched it the wrong way. The other number goes on the x axis. You want to produce a more square image and then stretch it back out horizontally. If you look up how the lenses work it will make more sense 🤘🏻

16:04 cool film grain technique

your colour space transform for interstellar is wrong. seems like you used the 4k HDR version of the film, where you'd need to import it as REC2020 ST2084 4000 nits and output it to whatever (srgb or rec709 or rec2020 ST2084 if u have an HDR display) with a wide enough timeline gamut. I can assure you that scene is not washed out at all, especially when you watch it in actual IMAX film where there is no possibility for colour space errors.

I thought he will hit you with a sold 4 or 5, Lmao

HI kaizen what tutorials do you recommend after the donut , iam a beginner

Interstellar was a amazing choice great job

BRROOO - I love interstellar as well haha

So the commercial breaks are longer than the actual review. For the next episode. Get a master movie editor. Just kidding. I know you can't do it for free and would be happy to look at them when the conclusion of this clip is more than 10 sec of review snippets.

I thinking about cinematic render...!

I take a little exception to the title of this video.. You don't "LET a Real Cinematographer Roast you 3D Art", you are "Gifted with the knowledge of a real cinematographer on your 3D Art". ;)

why the compare betweeen anamorphic and default camera transition so quik? i can hardly tell the difference

As an artist I think the character is too centered, you could lower the camera and center the vanishing point of the sea more and... I don't understand why you tilted the camera 😆

This roast was delicious 😋

I hate to be nitpicky but all the steps at 10:35 were unnecessary. The image turned out exactly the same after doing the aspect and compositing scaling except your pixels are now stretched out in the final render. I would also like to point out that when you do the color grading, maybe not in this case but in general it's a good time to assess your materials, go back and tweak them if they don't react to the compositing properly.

Betterhelp have a controversial past,the therapist isn't licensed

Bro if you want to get that anamorphic oval stretched bokeh, just under the aperture settings change Ration 1 to 2 )))

he was way to soft on you...after pointing out all the mistakes and things you could change, I'll say a 6/10 because it's not so bad after all. But yes I'm nobody to be listened to.

Very enjoyable video but 'Depth of field point' or target makes no sense. (Is there a depth of water point for example?) Stick with focal length if you are talking about the lens or focal point maybe if you are talking about the scene.

Thanks for another great video. And though I'm by no means a "professional" I think I can explain what an anamorphic lens is and "how it works", well enough to let people "get the gist" of it. Simply put, all (normal) "lenses" are ROUND, and so the image that they "project" into the camera towards the "film/sensor" is thereby also circular (round). So in order to get a "square final image" that "circular projection" has to be at least so large that it's diameter covers the "film/sensor" diagonal (otherwise You will "see" the inside/apperture" in Your "final image". This means that You always "crop" the "projected image" to get Your "final image". And since all lenses also have more or less distortion towards the edges " You also usually do not let Your "final image" reach all the way out to the edge of the projected image (as You then will get a "degraded image", though having some of it can be considered an "artistic choice". These "premises" makes it so that to get the "highest amounts" of "good pixels" in Your "final image" from a given (normal lens with it's circular "projection") You would use a square image (film/sensor) format. Because if You choose final image to have a "wide" (or "tall" ?) format You are then forced to simply "Crop out" more of the (circular) "projected image". Which will result in a "lower resolution" image. So FINALLY to the "Anamorphic Lenses", in these You have a "special lens element" that "distorts the image" so that it "squeezes the projected image" horizontally , so that everything has it's correct height, but is "narrower horizontally". This means that all though the "projected image" is STILL "circular", it "encompasses" more of the scene "out to the sides" ((i.e. HORIZONTALLY) than an image of a "normal lens" (i.e. the "same lens" but "without the squeezing"). And so You can now "crop out a square from this "horizontally squeezed" image, thereby "utilising the maximum of "god pixels" of the film/sensor, and will still "see more out to the sides" in the "final image".... BUT this "final image" that we have created by a "square crop" of a "horizontally squeezed" image of course looks severely distorted... when viewed "as a square"... How ever if You "stretch it out horizontally" You have a "wide screen image" that has used a "higher (maximum) amount" of "good pixels" in that "final image" compared to if You had chosen to "just crop" a normal ("unsqueezed) projected image"... And so that means to "correctly" show/view an "anamorphicly(?) created" image You need an "anamorphic projector/viewer". That is a "projector/viewer" that has a lens (or software) that reverses the "horizontal squeeze" that the "camera lens has introduced"... So that's about it (I believe). Now the fact that anamorphic lenses needs "special lens elements" also gives rise to a host of other "consequences" and it is these that gives them the "special look", besides their "high horizontal resolution"...

You shouldnt take better help. They have leaked customer details and have unlicenced therapists. Shameful company

Man, the background music at 10:00 is really irritating with the rapidly thumping bass. I wanna hear what you're saying, but I don't want to piss off my neighbours at the same time. lol

At 17:30 what does he mean by "the horizon is a little bit off" ?

Why duplicate the plane and not just scale it larger?

one of us

This is more of a Tutorial then a roast and for the really interesting Feedback you have to be a pattreon. :/

interstellar vfx was better doesnt mean yours is bad

I never get these "I got someone to rate my art" type videos. To me, art is an expression of yourself, a portion of your soul projected onto a medium comprehensible by others. Every piece of art, made not to mimic someone else's soul, but to express your own is a 10/10 This might be controversial to say, but I believe good art is made for the sake of the artist, not the audience See Goya's paintings never meant to be seen, or in contrast Disney's inoffensive movies made to cater to the largest possible audience

Polyfjord isn't a cinematographer LOL

Just saying but you could really make the Ice planet from Interstellar

There is no such thing as a "depth of field point" so why even say it and then say "...or focal point" ? Just say 'focal point'. Depth of field is a value based on a ratio that cannot be a 'point'. The depth is greater or shallower depending on the aperture.

eyyy after watching the entire video its disapointing to put polys feedback behin a paywall :( basically i watched the entire thing to hear how he would do it :/

oh no not betterhelp maaan

5/10

You can't do a 5 minute sponsored segment, bro. TF is going on with that